Graphical user interface (GUI) platforms are deployed on multiple devices with different graphics hardware capabilities. Modern graphics processors are capable of high-fidelity visual effects for some classes of applications, e.g. video games, but GUI platforms have not utilized these hardware capabilities.
Some GUI platforms, such as Microsoft's Windows Presentation Format (WPF), use hardware acceleration to provide a rich GUI experience. However, these platforms use hardware acceleration in a least common denominator approach and do not utilize the range of hardware capabilities. Additionally, these platforms do not allow GUI developers to build custom graphical effects, nor do these GUI platforms provide a fallback mechanism for techniques targeted at high-end classes of hardware that are implemented on a device that does not support high-fidelity visual effects.